Paul Faber, Surgeon | Page 6

could not banish.
The surgeon had scarcely begun a reply, when the old minister made his appearance. He was a tall, well-built man, with strong features, rather handsome than otherwise; but his hat hung on his occiput, gave his head a look of weakness and oddity that by nature did not belong to it, while baggy, ill-made clothes and big shoes manifested a reaction from the over-trimness of earlier years. He greeted the doctor with a severe smile.
"I am much obliged to you, Mr. Faber," he said, "for bringing me home my little runaway. Where did you find her?"
"Under my horse's head, like the temple between the paws of the Sphinx," answered Faber, speaking a parable without knowing it.
"She is a fearless little damsel," said the minister, in a husky voice that had once rung clear as a bell over crowded congregations--"too fearless at times. But the very ignorance of danger seems the panoply of childhood. And indeed who knows in the midst of what evils we all walk that never touch us!"
"A Solon of platitudes!" said the doctor to himself.
"She has been in the river once, and almost twice," Mr. Drake went on. "--I shall have to tie you with a string, pussie! Come away from the horse. What if he should take to stroking you? I am afraid you would find his hands both hard and heavy."
"How do you stand this trying spring weather, Mr. Drake? I don't hear the best accounts of you," said the surgeon, drawing Ruber a pace back from the door.
"I am as well as at my age I can perhaps expect to be," answered the minister. "I am getting old--and--and--we all have our troubles, and, I trust, our God also, to set them right for us," he added, with a suggesting look in the face of the doctor.
"By Jove!" said Faber to himself, "the spring weather has roused the worshiping instinct! The clergy are awake to-day! I had better look out, or it will soon be too hot for me."
"I can't look you in the face, doctor," resumed the old man after a pause, "and believe what people say of you. It can't be that you don't even believe there is a God?"
Faber would rather have said nothing; but his integrity he must keep fast hold of, or perish in his own esteem.
"If there be one," he replied, "I only state a fact when I say He has never given me ground sufficient to think so. You say yourselves He has favorites to whom He reveals Himself: I am not one of them, and must therefore of necessity be an unbeliever."
"But think, Mr. Faber--if there should be a God, what an insult it is to deny Him existence."
"I can't see it," returned the surgeon, suppressing a laugh. "If there be such a one, would He not have me speak the truth? Anyhow, what great matter can it be to Him that one should say he has never seen Him, and can't therefore believe He is to be seen? A god should be above that sort of pride."
The minister was too much shocked to find any answer beyond a sad reproving shake of the head. But he felt almost as if the hearing of such irreverence without withering retort, made him a party to the sin against the Holy Ghost. Was he not now conferring with one of the generals of the army of Antichrist? Ought he not to turn his back upon him, and walk into the house? But a surge of concern for the frank young fellow who sat so strong and alive upon the great horse, broke over his heart, and he looked up at him pitifully.
Faber mistook the cause and object of his evident emotion.
"Come now, Mr. Drake, be frank with me," he said. "You are out of health; let me know what is the matter. Though I'm not religious, I'm not a humbug, and only speak the truth when I say I should be glad to serve you. A man must be neighborly, or what is there left of him? Even you will allow that our duty to our neighbor is half the law, and there is some help in medicine, though I confess it is no science yet, and we are but dabblers."
"But," said Mr. Drake, "I don't choose to accept the help of one who looks upon all who think with me as a set of humbugs, and regards those who deny every thing as the only honest men."
"By Jove! sir, I take you for an honest man, or I should never trouble my head about you. What I say of such as you is, that, having inherited a lot of humbug, you don't know it for such, and do the best you can with it."
"If such is